Walker-My_Musical_Ex.. - Walter Cosand

156 MY MUSICAL EXPERIENCES
whether amateur or professional, will sympathize with
me in the following experience) when I made the
embarrassing discovery that my coadjutor could
neither play in time nor keep in tune ; that I was
associated, in fact, with such a player as would not
have been tolerated in any educated circle, even in
unmusical England. I saw, however, that the poor
young man was extremely nervous ; and his nice,
gentle manners so far enlisted my sympathies in his
favour, that I continued to play with him for two or
three days, venturing to hope that when he had
become a little more used to me, and his shyness had
somewhat worn off, he would keep in better time, and
not play so deplorably out of tune. My hopes, how-
ever, on this head were doomed to disappointment,
and the situation became perplexing in the extreme.
The youth fully believed that he had a career before
him, and looked forward to being able in the future
to do much for his parents, to whom he seemed
greatly attached. They had made great sacrifices in
order to give him the means of developing the talent
which both he and they were fully persuaded that he
possessed ; and was I to tell him that, instead of
being full of promise, his playing was pitiable, and
often most excruciating? But it really was labour
lost for me to go through such a penance day after
day; and then would come, as the wind-up, a per-
formance which even pleasure-seekers must feel to
be ridiculous. So I tried to persuade him in the